Digg – Uproxx Media In, Power Users Out

Uproxx.com is “a blog network for news and opinion on sports, movies, music, celebrities, fights, gossip, and more” or in other words a clone similar to Gawker Media, which has an insanely large impact for folks who exclusively get their news online. But unlike gawker, I hadn’t heard anything about Uproxx Media until two weeks ago when a banner for the new “Blog Network” popped up on digg.com under the “Integrating with digg” header. Usually this is where pronounced media companies like the Wall Street Journal, CBS News, etc. are displayed on the site but recently the rotation has included Uproxx and a handful of its blogs (filmdrunk and withleather).

Not surprisingly, the Uproxx network did not exist prior to a month ago or at the very least it wasn’t indexed by Google very well, which is pretty much the same thing. According to The Way Back Machine the blogs that make up Uproxx’s network did exist — some dating back two years or more — but It is safe to say the network itself is virtually unknown. This made it all the more difficult to find information about the company.

Who owns Uproxx Media and why can’t I find any information freely available online? The only significant piece of information I could find was about their recently inked a deal to be represented by the advertising network YBN Media, who’s client base includes Fark.com and Yardbarker. The positioning on digg makes sense now that they have a worthy ad network behind them, but what is unclear is why digg would promote a virtually unknown blog network. Uproxx can’t possibly deliver a comparible level of traffic to digg.com and it does little to improve the legitimacy of digg as a news gatherer the way the Wall Street Journal could. I’d be interested to find out the reasoning behind this choice.

About the same time Uproxx was featured on digg, something else noteworthy happened: Digg top brass made the decision to ban several of its most active users. The first notable banning was of digg’s third most popular submitter Reg Saddler a.k.a. Zaibatisu and they continued steadily with large groups of users being removed for violating the site’s terms of service. The most referenced reason for banning is due to use of user scripts to artificially alter digg’s heart: the algorithm for choosing front page stories. But not every user received an explanation for why they were banned and not all banned users used scripts.

So we have no definitive reason for the mass banning of highly active digg users and we do not know why newcomer Uproxx Media is featured on the site or who owns them (YBN Media?). I’m not in any position to insinuate that these two things are related. I’m simply describing two notable developments about the site.

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